By "here," Valentina told us she meant "Khoseni," a "country" (tiko) that exists on neither colonial - nor postcolonial-era administrative maps but whose remembered territorythe area ruled by Khosa chiefs in precolonial timesencompasses all of the critical sites of Valentina's life story: her birthplace and childhood homes (Xisangwana, Nyongane, Makuvulane); where she married (Timanguene); and the place she "was shown" when as a widow with two young daughters she moved to Facazisse, a place she choseand where she feels doubly securebecause of her lifelong association with (and marriage into) the Swiss Mission church.

23The term precolonial, applied to regions that would become colonies of European states, implicitly suggests a time or a place of waiting, peoples somehow living in anticipation of their subordination to an external power.